


Gin Lane

by E350tb



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Historical, Depressing, Execution, F/F, Gen, Georgian Period, London, Misery, Poverty, Religion, Slave Trade, Slavery, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 18:39:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18267137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E350tb/pseuds/E350tb
Summary: Drunk for a pennyDead drunk for twopenceClean straw for nothingThis is London in the age of George II.





	Gin Lane

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to [realfakedoors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/realfakedoors/pseuds/realfakedoors) for proofreading!
> 
> I'd like to give a very big content warning here; this is not a happy story. If I'm honest, it was sort of upsetting to write, but I had the vision in my head and I had to put it to paper. This was based on reading Peter Ackroyd's History of England Volume IV, which covers this period, and more specifically on the contemporary print 'Gin Lane.' The artist, William Hogarth, was satirizing and condemning the so-called 'Gin Craze' (compared to beer, which was apparently fine), but I think it's taken a cultural significance as an image of poverty and destitution that has long outlived it's original intention. The print can be found on the Wikipedia page [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane).
> 
> I suppose I find this fascinating because at the exact historical moment all of this is happening, Great Britain is basically becoming a world power. Rule Britannia is written in 1742, for example, and even today our image of Georgian Britain is basically big wigs, stately carriages and open countryside.

**Gin Lane**

It’s dawn in London.

The City - and it is never the city, only the City - already bustles with the sounds of carriages and footsteps, of shouts and whoops and hollers, and the air is thick with a hundred smells; perspiration, horse’s dung, embers of coal and smoke, spirits, human refuge. The City will soon be awash with gentry, clergymen, pickpockets, prostitutes, doctors, soldiery, merchants, carpenters, beggars, aristocrats; in the confines of the sprawling capital, nobody can escape each other. It is a mad blend of paradise and prison.

Lapis Lazuli awakes in a pile of straw in a back alley somewhere in Holburn, and as she stretches fragments of dust and hay and dead skin fall gently to the cobbled ground. She sits up to find a dog has made his bed atop her waist, and from the smell of it, he’s done other things besides.

 _God bless London_ , she thinks insincerely.

She pushed the mutt off and stands, yawning as she looks around. Today, she thinks, is another day - another day to find a job. She must, _must_ get lucky some day, right? She stalks off, out of the alley and into an already bustling street.

The cries are deafening; “ _Cure-all tonics! Tuppence to cure all ills!” “News from the wars! Straight from the Low Countries!” “Beware the demon of gin!” “Get today’s new caricature of-” “WALPOLE-” “-sixpence-” “JENKINS’ EAR!” “Glorious new ballad, Rule Britannia-”_

She loses track of words - they turn into an indecipherable soup in her ears as she wanders to the poorhouse. It is big and grey, and dismal, and it is surrounded by a square of the wretched - an emancipated man in a red coat and nothing else sleeps on the steps, or perhaps he has starved and nobody has bothered to bury him. His dog lies next him, and there’s a bird picking at loose skin on his knees.

_God bless London._

She isn’t even inside when the manager is there, his fine, if plain, clothes a marked contrast from the gloom around him. His beady eyes regard her behind his spectacles, and he rasps out a reply before a question can even be ask.

“Begone,” he snarls, “We’ll ‘ave no ‘arlots here.”

“I’m not a harlot,” replies Lapis lamely.

“You either are,” sniffs the man, “Or you will be, for that’s the only way for a woman to make money on the street. And an ‘arlot is an ungodly demon, and we are a place of the Lord.”

“Does the Lord not tell us to help those in need?” asks Lapis.

“We,” repeats the man, “Will ‘ave no ‘arlots here.”

He slams the door, and Lapis sees the sign printed there; **NO HARLOTS NOR SOLDIERS.**

She sighs, a long exhale, and turns back to the madness. Somewhere else. Surely, somewhere else.

* * *

It’s mid-morning now in Smithfield, where once they burned the heretics. But these are more civilised times. Today it is a market of cattle, perhaps the greatest in the world. And a market means money. And money means greed. And greed makes the world go round.

Lord help him, all Greg wants to do is sell a cow. Nothing big, nothing ambitious, he just wants to sell a single cow. But nobody wants it. They gravitate towards the big landowners with their well-bred, well-fed cows, who in any case can sell for cheaper because they had more of them.

“I shall give you sixpence,” the gentleman says.

“The sign says two pounds,” Greg replies pointedly.

“She’s underfed,” says the gentleman.

“I can’t afford feed,” admits Greg.

“Well,” says the gentleman, “His Lordship over there can, so I suppose I’ll just buy from him.”

He walks away, nose turned up.

Greg sighs, and for a moment he gazes at some feed, unguarded by the rich man who uses it for his cows. He could take some. They couldn’t possibly miss it, could they?

No. He can’t risk an unplanned trip to Virginia. He has a son.

He needs to sell his underfed cow so he can feed his underfed son. But nobody wants an underfed cow.

One day he’ll stop coming to Smithfield. And the landowners will look at the empty space he once sold in, and they will expand into it without a word, silently grateful that another peon is out of their way.

* * *

It’s noon at Tyburn, and everyone has come to see a highwayman hang.

It’s a carnival, a cheerful circus of men and women and children, participating in a joyous festival of death. Balladeers and pamphleteers roam the crowd, hawking their wares, and people jostle for a front row seat to see the rogue twitch. Atop the scaffold, Amethyst casts the crowd a winning smile. It’s all one big show, and she is the main player in the drama - everybody loves the condemned.

As the soldiers march her up onto the platform, she spies a lady at the front of the crowd - short, her hair almost pointed. She shoots her a winning smile, and the lady smiles awkwardly back. They stand her by the noose, and she realises she’s right in front of this attractive spectator.

She calls out over the crowd.

“What is your name?”

“Peridot!”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to see you, Peridot!” calls Amethyst, “And may I say, I should have loved to hold you up!”

Peridot blushes and the crowd laughs. The magistrate grimances.

The priest steps up to administer the last rites. Amethyst tunes him out, instead staring down at the girl - she’s a pretty one, and there’s something sad about seeing her on the last day of one’s life. Even if she were listening, the priest cannot be heard, drowned out by cries - cries for blood, cries for clemency, cries for the sake of crying out. It’s a bizarre Shakespearean play that is a comedy and a tragedy all at once.

Finally, the priest finishes his fruitless sermon, and Amethyst feels the noose placed around her neck. The executioner offers a hood, but she shakes her head. She’s going to go out with a smile, and the world is going to see it. She winks at Peridot as the drum begins to roll.

“So long,” she declares, “And may you all kiss my-”

There is the briefest sense of vertigo, and for a moment time seems to crawl. She sees Peridot, jumping at the suddenness of the drop, surrounded by the crowd baying for blood. The sky is blue. The sun is shining. It’s a lovely day to die.

There’s a crack.

When they take Amethyst down and drag her to the waiting cart for transport to the gibbet, she is still grinning - but her eyes are lifeless and her body grows cold. And the crowd gives out three cheers, for God, King, and Justice, and waits for the next unfortunate to march up to the gallows. For London bays for violent delight, and her appetite shall not be sated by something as common as a single hanging.

* * *

In the Company offices there’s a sense of monotony as the clock strikes two. Kevin sighs as he looks at the fashionable grandfather clock in the foyer, just beyond the door of his tiny office. The owner likes red - the wallpaper is red, the furnishings are a royal scarlet, and even his outfits tend towards crimson. He’s away today, inspecting the merchandise at Bristol, but he insists that his paperwork be completed on schedule.

Kevin sighs and picks up the quill.

Three ships have left Plymouth today (or so they should have, if the tide and the winds are favourable.) They are sailing down the coast, past France and Iberia, to the West African Coast. There they shall pick up their precious cargo and sail from there to St. Kitts, whereupon they shall swap for cotton, sugar and molasses for delivery to the luxury markets of old England. It’s the most boring, most banal of trades, the merest matter of ensuring a profit at every turn… and that customs dues are paid, hence Kevin’s job.

He chews on the end of his quill as he does the sums in his head.

How much does one pay for each body aboard a slave ship? Ten shillings? God, he can’t quite remember.

He sits back on his red-cushioned chair, thinking harder. Confound the man who invented mathematics.

Further questions must be asked - what is the optimal storage space in the hold of a ship? How many slaves can be crammed under the decks before the chance of expiry outweighs the chance of profit? (You cannot, after all, sell a dead slave - a malnourished one, certainly, but not a dead one.) How does one pay the local slave-hunters for their trade?

Kevin wonders if it’s late enough in the day for a drink of gin to be acceptable.

He shrugs - father isn’t here to tell him no, anyway - and gets up from his desk, wandering out of the offices of the Company and into the street. Outside, workmen are painting the window sills and door frames, but the incompetent louts have spilt their barrel. You just can’t get good work these days.

Kevin walks through a puddle of blood red that stains his shoes, stains the cobbled road, stains the very soul of the City of London.

* * *

It’s early evening, and the Thames shimmers gold. The City bustles once more as the working hours come to a close. Men and women wander in the shadow of St. Pauls, bound for the coffee houses, the alehouses, the taverns, the gin shops. As the sun sinks, the shadows lengthen and darken, as if the hand of death is gently reaching out to take London in his waiting palm.

The soldiers come out now. Not the _serving_ men - they guard the palaces and the officers at Horse Guards. No, these are the old soldiers, the destitute, their youth stolen by the ravages of battle. They hobble on homemade crutches, or lay on the street without the energy to stand, and those who can barter their dignity for the means to live another day - or at very least, to buy the gin that shall let them forget.

Pearl is home from the wars - she left, disguised as a boy, joining the prestigious Foot Guards. She returned without an arm, with only the clothes on her back, without hope of a pension. Her last possession is her braided jacket, the symbol and pride of the Foot Guards. It is the last symbol of her self-respect.

“I shall take it off you for two shillings,” the pawnbroker says.

“It’s worth six at least,” retorts Pearl.

“To you, per’aps,” replies the pawnbroker, “But I can’t sell an army jacket. Nobody decent would be seen dead as a soldier. Besides, there’s an ‘ole in the sleeve.”

Pearl looks at the jacket in her arm. She thinks, remembers, a vision of smoke and gunfire, the taste of soot still heavy on the roof of her mouth.

She perceives long lines of men in scarlet red, a beautiful line until the musket balls start flying. The crack of a cannon, and the grapeshot flying through the air; men are dashed to pieces by a hundred tiny fragments. Marching over a man lying face down in his own blood and bile, his friend appealing in vain for his comrades not to trample him. Pearl steps on his back, because she cannot, _cannot_ break the line.

A cannonball slams into the ranks, and legs and arms fly into the air as men are thrown around like ragdolls. The piper stops suddenly, for he is now bereft of pipe and head. Still the enemy can’t be seen, just the fog of gunsmoke that they march ever onwards into. And Pearl thinks, she's quite certain in fact, there’s copper and the ruddy, too-familiar taste of burning hair mixed in with the general taste of her own bile in the back of her throat. If she were a betting woman, she’d even put money on it. But she's not gambling, and her memory is fallible, because she hardly can recall the memory without feeling her hands shake, the spaces between her fingers itching for a musket to ground her. There were only so many things a person can pay attention to, and she'd given everything that day just to survive.

And then, at last, come the French, dressed in white like angels, bayonets gleaming. And the red line stops, and the cry comes out - “Make ready! Present! _Fire!_ ” - and she’s deafened by the crack of a hundred firelocks. And then the French reply, and the pain shoots through her arm, and she falls to the grass. A man stomps on the wounded arm and she cries out, and her voice melds into the cacophony and is no longer hers…

She shakes out of her thoughts and turns to the pawnbroker.

“Three shillings?”

The pawnbroker ponders.

“Three shillings.”

The exchange is made, and Pearl leaves the pawnbroker with no coat, three shillings richer. And she walks down the lane to the gin shop to spend it all, each step increasing her self-loathing by a thousandfold, for she knows she will die here, one day, in a pool of drink and nightmares.

* * *

As the evening grows darker, it seems as though the eye of God upon London grows unfocused, and thus the demons come out to play.

All day, the preacher has given his sermons, ranting, wailing and even weeping at the glory of the Lord before his adoring audience. But now the sun is down, and the preacher has stripped his black vestments, and now Bismuth sees him strolling purposely down the alleyway for his evening entertainment.

The poor woman is short and almost boyish, and Bismuth has known her for some time. Once she had a love, but that love was taken by the ravages of smallpox. Now Ruby is bereft of love, bereft of property, bereft of home, and dependent entirely on the mercy of the Lord. And as she recognises the preacher her eyes light up, and she steps forward to find meaning.

But Bismuth knows there is no salvation to be found here. She watches as they talk, as Ruby talks at first but slowly falls to her knees, begging to know why the Lord would forsake someone who had never drunk, never sinned, never done a thing wrong. And the preacher smiles, and places a hand on her shoulder, and tells her that meaning can be found in the alley next to the butchers.

Bismuth swallows bile and walks over, her eyes lit up by rage.

“You are no preacher,” she snarls, and Ruby glances at her in confusion, “You are taking advantage of her.”

The preacher sniffs.

“I am making a transaction, woman,” he replies, “This is not your business.”

“How is this godly?” demands Bismuth, teeth bared, “How is this _right?!_ ”

“Right?” demands the man, “Right?! What is right in this godforsaken city? What is decent in this new-age Sodom? God has abandoned us all, so what is the point of morality?”

His voice breaks, ever so slightly.

“Let me have this,” he says, “Just let me have this.”

Bismuth’s expression hardens.

“No,” she replied, “Not her. Not today.”

She takes Ruby’s hand and takes her away from the preacher, back to her smith. And Ruby cries, because she had been legitimately offered divine explanation - and the only cost would have been her body.

And the preacher? He drinks. He whores. And before the sun rises again, he swings from a belltower.

* * *

There is no work today.

Lapis wanders the street at night, and despair fills her very being, for nobody wants her. They all think she’s a prostitute, a beggar, a layabout, someone who is in some way broken, and now there is no company but the cold darkness of the City. She cannot even bring herself to sleep, because god help her, she’ll die out here.

She stops in front of a statue. There stands the King, gazing majestically into the distance, hand on a sword - symbol of the glory of Great Britain. And around his pedestal lie the broken bottles of gin, each one a broken dream, a lost soul, a life abandoned by God, King, and Country. The air reeks of the bitters, and Lapis feels the dry passage of her throat.

She wanders on into the dark alleys, looking for a place to relieve herself, whereupon she encounters the man.

The man smiles a toothless grin and reaches into a threadbare jacket for a knife. His chest is exposed, and Lapis can see his ribcage.

“Yer money or yer life,” he says, and there’s no joy, no life in that voice.

“I have no money,” replies Lapis bitterly.

The man steps forward, and Lapis backs up against the brick wall.

“Please,” the man says, “I need it. I need bread.”

“So do I,” says Lapis, “But I have no money. Find somebody who does.”

The man narrows his eyes.

“Listen,” he snaps, “I know how a lady such as yerself lives on these streets. I know some dandy’s given yer a crown for his… _yer money or yer life._ ”

Lapis shakes her head.

“I’ve told you,” she says, “I have noth- _arrgh!_ ”

She looks down at the rusty knife in her chest, and then back up at the toothless man. He weeps as he grins, rifling through her pockets with her free hand.

He finds nothing.

“Sorry ma’am,” he says, “I thought you was holding out on me.”

He withdraws his knife, and Lapis slumps to the ground.

“Only tryin’ to make a livin’,” he shrugs.

He limps away, leaving Lapis to bleed alone, staring up at the stars as they slowly vanish in a brightening sky. She can see the moon glowing down on her, and for some reason she takes it’s gaze as a comfort.

In Smithfield, Greg sleeps in a bundle of hay, blissfully unaware that his cow had been stolen.

At Tyburn, Peridot stands next to a gibbet, the cold body of Amethyst swaying in the twilight breeze, and sighs, wondering what it might have been like to know her.

In the City, Kevin stumbles back to his office and clutches the doorknob. He curses; they’ve managed to paint over it, and now his hand is stained red.

In Southwark, Pearl sits on a stair, swigging another bottle of gin, too numb to even weep.

In the shadow of St. Pauls, Bismuth comforts a shattered Ruby, and tries to tell her that God has not abandoned her, even as she herself wonders.

And in St. Giles, in a place they call Gin Lane, Lapis Lazuli fades away, still staring up at the fading moon, knowing that nobody will care to mourn. She closes her eyes and takes her leave of this greatest and most awful city in the world.

It’s dawn in London.

**The End**


End file.
